


A lack of option

by StormXPadme



Series: "Tales Untold" & "Tales Beyond": (Don't) Need-to-know [7]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bisexual Male Character, Casual Sex, Creampie, First Age, Fourth Age, Friends to Lovers, Gondolin, Library Sex, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Rebirth, Rivendell | Imladris, Sailing To Valinor, Second Age, Semi-Public Sex, Third Age, Valinor, part time boyfriends with more issues than imladris daily, you can pry librarian!Erestor from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22323799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormXPadme/pseuds/StormXPadme
Summary: When it comes to his love life, Glorfindel never really had a choice.***While this oneshot is part of my main verse, it's not necessary to know any of the other parts to understand it. Please be VERY aware of major spoilers for my "Tales Untold"-series and the upcoming follow-up series "Tales Beyond" though. If you plan to read the series and want to be surprised by major plot twists, please skip this story.
Relationships: Erestor/Glorfindel (Tolkien)
Series: "Tales Untold" & "Tales Beyond": (Don't) Need-to-know [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125545
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	A lack of option

The thing with Erestor is that it never occurred to Glorfindel to love him.

Glorfindel doesn’t love Erestor when he takes it upon himself to train a scrawny elfling for battle, whose parents and brother do not have too great a love for.

Erestor is of no concern either when Glorfindel weds his housekeeper and she has his son, and he sends both of them away to be safe from his visions of doom.

Glorfindel doesn’t love Erestor when he carries him out of the burning Gondolin and then fights the demon of flame to the death.

He doesn’t love him when he meets the boy again - now a capable scribe and advisor and still a less-than-average warrior - on the fields of the Last Alliance, because life obviously isn’t done with Glorfindel just yet. Nor when they discover their mutual preference for bodily pleasure without any kind of bond, one that is seldom for elf-kind. They still like each other just fine, and there’s no one else around.

It’s not a choice, it’s lack of option.

Glorfindel appreciates Erestor’s unprejudiced neutrality in the ongoing petty conflicts of their kin (Erestor hates everyone equally) and his unshakable impassiveness (Erestor cares for the good of their people but not much for the fate of a world that never cared about him), and so it’s really just natural they end up on Lord Elrond’s court together after the war.

Erestor makes sure, Glorfindel and his son stay off each other’s throat when the boy suddenly appears at the city gates. Glorfindel keeps some soldiers out of Erestor’s sphere who have no idea of the sharp deadliness of a Gondolin mind, or the even deadlier blade that Erestor always wears under those flowing black robes.

Glorfindel is also there when Erestor falls in love with the idea of loving a maiden of Lórien who is long spoken for. Glorfindel warns him and takes his anger without batting a lid, and finally catches him before Erestor can follow the flirt into the abyss that it’s been doomed for from the start.

It doesn’t take long until they go back to spend their days arguing and their nights drinking in the library like nothing happened. When the mood is right, Glorfindel still fucks his frustration about this world once more going down the drain into Erestor’s willing body. When the next Age draws to an end and war is upon them again, Glorfindel sometimes bends over Erestor’s desk and allows him to fuck both their agitated helplessness out of them.

It’s lust at best.

Glorfindel long unlearned how to love. He just likes to keep and protect what’s his own. Unfortunately, he’s never been particularly good at it.

When after the War of the Ring, Erestor and Glorfindel’s son are both summoned to fight and give council in the last conflict of Men and Elf, Glorfindel fails to read the signs right once more. He doesn’t follow them to Gondor in time.

He arrives only to pick up the ruins of what hate and revenge made of that too thin, too unfocused Noldo elfling that Glorfindel once trained under the Golden Sun of his own house. Of the elf whom he should have loved as his own and failed three Ages in a row instead.

Glorfindel’s son, at least, is still there when Glorfindel brings Erestor home and together they mourn their failure, before Glorfindel finally turns his back to a world that took everything from him. That he can go at least with his son’s best wishes in his heart, that is thanks to Erestor too. Just like Glorfindel, Erestor has always had only a vague idea of the concept of love, but his wisdom and all that raw, unbridled energy he’s radiated all his life, put many shattered souls together like those puzzles of tens of thousands adorning his living chambers.

Yet Glorfindel is alone and miserable in a land of unity and joy and light. In the light of the ones who came before, he slowly starts to understand that pain, yearning and regret is love too. When the time of the elves on Middle-earth comes to an end at last and his son joins him at the harbor, he can finally look upon him without mourning the wife who did not survive his wrong choice back then, when they were all young and foolish.

Glorfindel is happy and without anger. He is hurting without the need to escape now, and enjoying without the constant need to look back over his shoulder for either danger or atonement. He’s learned to live with an open heart, but he is not whole.

The first rain of spring clings to Erestor’s raven hair when he shows up on Glorfindel’s doorstep. His face, too, is now free of agony and rage, and his body is free of scar. They fall into each other like sand melting into the tide, and they are naked before they spoke a word, safe for Erestor's brief assurance that Glorfindel's wife long knows and that she approves, just like he's hoped.

When they try to bond, neither of them is surprised that they already are bonded.

His son finds them like this the next day, and he brings Elrond and Elladan and Elrohir and Lindir. The look on his friends’ faces would probably be worth a laugh, a sound that Glorfindel can’t remember hearing from himself in an Age or two, if he wasn’t just buried knuckle-deep in his lover and too distracted to mind.

They celebrate later, for a month nonstop, and things are well. Glorfindel is still wed to Gondolin, but his wife was in the First Age, and the Fourth Age is Erestor’s and his, and maybe the Fifth Age will be for the three of them if she should ever decide to return. Conventional, after all, is not a word anyone would ever choose to describe Glorfindel’s private life, least of all him.

Glorfindel’s heart is big and wide now, he grows there what he can and tends it, and in it he knows, that one day he will be whole.

Erestor laughs when he asks him about it, and tells him that after surviving three Ages in his bed, he’ll deal with another joining that unprecedented kind of relationship just fine. When Glorfindel warns him that actually, his wife has always been the adventurous one in their bedroom, he shudders and comes all over himself. Chuckling, Glorfindel kisses him, and it is mid-day before they can bring themselves to join the council for harvest that Elrond called in.

It never occurred to Glorfindel to love Erestor, but he’s done so all his life.

It is, indeed, a lack of option, because there’s never been an alternative to loving him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to know more about those idiots as described in this little vignette, the first parts of the "Tales Untold"-series can be found in my profile here already ;).


End file.
